The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't

The Productivity Paradox

We face danger whenever information growth outpaces our understanding of how to process it.

The amount of information was increasing much more rapidly than our understanding of what to do with it, or our ability to differentiate the useful information from the mistruths.13 Paradoxically, the result of having so much more shared knowledge was increasing isolation along national and religious lines.

The instinctual shortcut that we take when we have “too much information” is to engage with it selectively, picking out the parts we like and ignoring the remainder, making allies with those who have made the same choices and enemies of the rest.

More Information, More Problems

INTRODUCTION

Twitter and Facebook generally amplify consensus and drown out or pile on dissenting views.33 It makes independence a lot harder when you face a social sanction for delivering an unpopular opinion. (It also makes changing your mind harder, as I mentioned earlier.)

Beware the Herd

All I’m saying is that I think that balance has shifted, at least slightly. I think it’s shifted in a way that may require you to trust the consensus a bit less and question the conventional wisdom a bit more.